I suppose it had already started then. I suppose Mum knew instantly how much money such a huge arrangement would have cost and knew where the money had come from. I suppose it wasn’t his first time to the track. But I still like to pretend it was. That there was something magical about that day; that somehow, Dad remembers it as something more than the amount of money that he won.
***
Later that night, I sit hunched in the hallway with my knees up under my chin and my arms full of books.
‘We just can’t fit them,’ Mum says to me, and her voice is so gentle that it immediately makes me panic. It’s the sort of voice people use when there’s been a death or a terrible accident. Mum hasn’t used it in a long time. Not even telling us about losing the house and moving to a caravan was enough to warrant her gentle voice.
‘No,’ I say and I sound so like Taylor that I think I surprise us both.
‘Stell, we all have to give things up.’
‘No. I don’t care what else goes – I’m keeping my books.’ I look up at the ceiling. It’s much less interesting here than it is in the kitchen. No stains or cracks. No traces of our lives here.
Mum looks at me pleadingly. ‘You don’t even read half of them.’
‘Of course I do! I read them all the time, Mum! You just don’t notice because you’re never here.’
Taylor looks up from where she’s tipping drawers of things into boxes in her bedroom. She nods her head in agreement.
Mum looks at me in that searching way that suddenly makes me feel sick. I cling harder, feeling the edges of the paperbacks press into my skin. ‘I’m keeping my books.’
‘There’s no room. The place is tiny.’
‘I thought you said it was a deluxe cabin!’ Taylor calls from her room.
‘Deluxe at Fairyland Caravan Park?’ Mum closes her eyes. ‘Stell, c’mon. You know how small it’s going to be.’
‘Oh, so you lied to us.’
‘I didn’t lie to you.’
‘You lied! And you just took them out of my room! You should’ve at least asked.’ I frown. ‘It’s poor communication, Mum.’
‘Stella – don’t start with the self-help stuff, please. I don’t have the energy for any of this. I know they’re special to you, but they’re just not going to fit. I thought it’d just be easier if I packed them.’
‘They have to fit or I’m not going.’
She sighs. ‘Fair enough. Where are you going to go, then?’
I blink. I remember Taylor and I losing our tempers as very little kids and packing our kindy backpacks. We’d tell Mum we were running away and she’d ask the exact same thing. Where are you going to go, then? ‘I’ll live at my friend’s house!’ I tell her, the cover of How to Help People Stay Motivated digging into my ribs.
‘Good for you.’ She stands up. ‘More room for us in the deluxe cabin. You and Tay can put dinner on. I’ve got to sort through the linen cupboard.’
‘You can do dinner,’ Taylor says to me. While I’ve been carefully packing things with bubble wrap and labels and keeping track of everything with a master list, Taylor is just tipping everything into the boxes and taping them up. I guess she feels like her stuff will be safe from Dad in unmarked boxes. It makes me think that maybe she’s only as organised as she is by necessity. I’d be organised like this no matter what.
I watch as Taylor tips another drawer into a box. A kaleidoscope of everything familiar that we’re about to lose.
***
Ever since I was little, I’ve been obsessed with self-help books. The type that give you strategies for dealing with everything, from poor sleep through to creating positive workplace relationships. Taylor always goes on about how weird it is, being into that sort of stuff, but I like the feeling those books give me. A sense that I’ll be able to handle what gets thrown at me. It calms me down, although trying to explain that to Taylor is pointless.
Everyone’s a bit mystified about where my reading’s come from. Or they would be, I guess, if I hadn’t been adopted. Dad and Taylor would rather eat their own hair than read anything more than a magazine. Mum says she’s a reader, but her reading consists of re-reading Little Women each Christmas. I don’t think Mum loves reading for the sake of it – for the adventure, the strangeness. She reads for the warmth of it; the nostalgia. She reads the same book at Christmas because it’s what she’s always done.
Sometimes I wonder if she’d read more if she was less stressed and busy, but I don’t know. She’d probably just read more magazines with Taylor.
My books are still in neat piles in the hallway, where I’d sprung Mum trying to pack them. I can’t bring myself to move them – either back onto their shelves or into the boxes.
I wonder if my biological parents are readers and my stomach flops, like it always does. Maybe they’re writers. Maybe they’ve written self-help books – the good ones; the ones that make you feel as though you’re being guided by a kindly aunt or uncle. The ones that make you feel cleverer than you were when you started. I press my hand to my heart and feel the edges of the letter poking up from my bra.
When I grow up next year – because apparently, you’re all grown up when you hit eighteen – I’m going to do something that helps people. A therapist, maybe. Or a life coach. Maybe I’ll write a self-help book one day, the sort that helps people like a kindly aunt would. Maybe I’ll write a book that helps people who’ve been adopted.
Or maybe I’ll write one for people who have to move to a caravan park and have a gambling dad and a sister who burned down a library.
‘Pack those books!’ Mum calls from the other room, and I close my eyes and pretend not to hear her.
***
The next day, I wake up and stare at my bedroom ceiling. It’s plastered with very old glow-in-the-dark stickers and watermarked from where it leaked the year we had so much rain that most of Sutherbend flooded. I’ve never really loved my room, but I feel a sudden rush of fierce affection. If I were Zin, I’d probably start crying. I feel a sudden fondness for the beige walls and the window that doesn’t quite close. I want to hug the broken wardrobe and the faded carpet and the desk that’s just been sold to the neighbours across the road.
I listen to the sounds of the street. They’re really the only sounds I know. The distant chug of the train and the neighbour’s bad music and the occasional car going too fast just outside my window.
How could anywhere else possibly ever feel like home without these sounds? I pull my blankets up over my head, block my ears and practise being somewhere else. Somewhere that’s not home.
***
A little later on, I slip out the back before Mum can give me a job to do. Dad’s outside, staring at his garden shed and holding a mug of coffee that I’m certain has gone cold. He smiles when he sees me.
‘You look like you’re off somewhere.’
‘Friends,’ I say. I have my backpack slung over my shoulder. I keep my treasures in there, preferring the risk of being mugged to leaving them home alone with Dad. Zin had her phone and wallet stolen last year. Lara chased the guy down and knocked him out.